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Biographical entry Pink, Olive Muriel (1884 - 1975)

Born

17 March 1884Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Died

6 July 1975Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia

Occupation

Anthropologist and Botanical artist

Summary

Olive Muriel Pink travelled on the railway between Quorn, South Australia and Alice Springs in June-December 1930, after a drought had broken, stopping to sketch flowers wherever railway workers reported them. She made further sketches around Alice Springs 1957-60.

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Details

Educated in art at Hobart Technical College. Tracer, Public Works Department and later the Railways Commission of New South Wales. Studied anthropology with the Workers' Educational Association and became secretary to the Anthropological Society of New South Wales. Trips in 1926 & 1927 to Ooldea on the Transcontinental Line, SA. Many of her early drawings of desert flora were completed here. Retrenched in 1930 and moved to NT, living first with the Aboriginal people in the Tanami Desert and settling eventually in Alice Springs. In 1955 made application to the Assistant Administrator for reservation of an area of land on the eastern bank of the Todd as a flora reserve. In 1956 the Australian Arid Regions Flora Reserve of 20 hectares was gazetted. After her death it was renamed the Olive Pink Flora Reserve.